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I got a cold call last Wednesday morning (from an “03” Victoria phone number) from a representative of AdSmart media

As usual, I thought “here we go again”. As usual, he had a thick foreign accent

As usual, I listened politely. However, what was offered sounded interesting at first: Advertise a 30 second video of my business at selected retail outlets.

They would produce, for free, the video, which he said could cost up to $3000. I doubt they would spend more than $100 producing a video, but I decided to listen, as I’m always open to new ways to advertise Computer Aid.

After a few questions, it turns out it was actually a 13 second video, which is rotated with about 40 other videos… so my video plays about once every 8 – 9 minutes, or 2.5% of the time… based on prior experience, this should be dirt cheap, but I suspect it won’t be. There’s bound to be a high markup due to the costs of cold-calling to drum up advertisers

Anyway, their website looks nice, except its one of those awful “pretend singe page” layouts that seem popular at the moment, and I can see the costs are a bit higher that I would be prepared to pay: $22 per week for 1 location, $33 for 2 locations, $44 for 5 locations, $66 for 10 locations, etc

The nice part, is that there is no long contract: 1 or 2 months, then you can cancel

Plus you get to keep the video they produce

So, AdSmartMedia can make up to $22 X 40 = $880 per location, on 1100 locations Australia wide

Since I’m vaguely interested (except for the cost), I’m transferred to a “supervisor”

Now, a transfer to a supervisor also makes me suspicious. Its just that she is more experienced in convincing reluctant prospects (like me) to sign up

I tell her I need to do some research before I commit. She offers to call back that afternoon, I say: call tomorrow, as I’m busy the whole afternoon

She gets me to commit to being available to accept a call between 10 & 11am on Thursday… fine, I put it in my calendar

In the meantime, I have some spare time between customers, so I decide to check out these “locations” (they have the addresses on the website)… most seem to be small convenience stores, fishNchip shops, newsagents, bakeries, etc

I had time to have a look a 6 locations as follows:

Guy behind the counter didn’t know what I was talking about, & there was no advertising screen that I could see

Fast food place had a display, showing adverts for “MadAds.com.au”

Store had display (but it was off because the remote had been “stolen”)

Store had display working correctly (but given the loud environment, no sound could be heard)

Store had a display “frozen” … displaying some snickers bars

Another store had the display off… checkout lady didn’t know what the display was for & the owner wasn’t there (but he would be there “tomorrow”)

So, from what I saw, it looks like my money would end up in a black hole, with nobody calling me, because very few people would see my ad

So what happened on Thursday?

Nothing. Nobody called

But they did try to call on Friday morning (9:42am), but I wasn’t able to take the call

The only way I could see this working for myself, would be to visit all 25 nearby stores & pick the ones that actually have operating displays (and I won’t bother having any sound in the video, as its unlikely anyone will hear it)

I’d also have to regularly visit the stores to make sure the displays are not “accidentally” turned off

Otherwise, this could be an inexpensive way of producing a 13 second promotional video of my company

I won’t be using this particular product, but your mileage may vary… I’m sure there are others that found this product effective, but its just suitable for me

He said it had been a few years since he last used a computer… so naturally, I assumed a certain level of knowledge.

A few days later, he calls, saying he is have a great amount of difficulty using the mouse and that maybe I incorrectly changed a window setting to cause this…

So I go through some basic troubleshooting:

Did you try a different USB port? (He tried all 6 ports)

Do you have another mouse you can use? (he had already gone out & purchased a new mouse, but same problem)

OK, so what happens when you click the button? (either nothing, or some funny arrows appear, or a menu appears… but clicking on an icon doesn’t work (nor does double-clicking)… & sometimes it makes the screen move in unpredictable ways…

After a bit of head scratching, & asking him to right-click this & left-click that, he admits that there is no left or right button… just one in the middle…

Hmmm, did he buy an apple mouse by mistake?

No, its a logitek

OK, is the button on the left or right side?

“Its in the middle… & its a bit narrow”

Narrow?

Now the penny drops: He’s been using the scroll wheel as “The” mouse button…

So now I have to explain that the flat surface on either side of the “button” are the actual buttons… push them & they will make a clicking sound… but they don’t

So now its a leverage problem: move your finger further up towards the edge of the mouse & a fit further to the side…

Ah, finally he gets it… he’s totally amazed that the front flat surface of the mouse is actually 2 “secret” buttons that he never knew about!

I was recently asked to setup a USB printer (a dymo) as a print server, so that everyone in a small company could print to it.

The company supplied me with a new tp-link TL-WPS510U device

How difficult could it be? (famous last words)

I run the setup software from the supplied CD. The software detects the WPS510U, then finds the current WiFi network, then reconfigures the WPS510 to work “nicely” with the existing WiFi network.

So far, so good.

Then the setup software re-boots the WPS510U so that it can activate its new settings, & start working.

So, after waiting 15 minutes, I realise something is wrong.

I reset the WPS510U back to factory defaults, & try again (in case I made a mistake), but I get the same results.

Reset back to factory defaults, then, as a workaround, I also try to configure it via the USB port instead. Again, once it resets to take on its new settings, it dissappears.

OK, maybe its faulty, so I take it back to my office to see if I can get it to work on my network… & it works! Flawlessly!

Obviously I did something wrong at the customer premises!

So I go back & decide to use my own laptop (since I used it to configured the WPS510U at my office)…

But it still vanishes from the customer WiFi network!

At this point, most people would just give up & plug the printer into a USB port & then share it out.

But I’m curious, so after some lateral thinking I realise the customer network is using WiFi channel 13 (I am in Australia, after all, and channels 12, 13, 14 are perfectly legal… But then I have had similar issues with a Wii console (shame on you, Nintendo!))

So, after I change the customer WiFi to use Channel 11, the WPS510U can finally configure itself correctly (shame on you TP-Link!)

So, now the final step is to connect the company PCs to print to the “new” printer… except half of them cannot detect the printer over the network!

OK, I know when I’m beaten… I now give up & just use the printer connected via USB directly to a PC, then share it out via windows networking.

i’ve had such a bad experience with lollipop battery life, that I went back to using kitkat

But now that I have 2 identical phones, I decided to compare kitkat with the latest android: Marshmallow

Although the phones were not setup identically, I did give Marshmallow some big advantages as follows:

KitKat phone:

running standard Samsung kitkat 4.4.2

uses my current SIM card, used as a normal phone

I rooted, & disabled as much Samsung bloatware as possible

Running GSam battery monitor

Connected to WiFi

Max screen brightness

Fully charged

about 5 different gmail accounts activated, with notifications active

various other accounts setup (eg trello, firefox, etc)

Marshmallow:

Running AOSP Cyanogenmod (from sometime in May 2016)… IE a bare-bones android with no bloatware

no SIM card

GSam battery monitor

Connected to WiFi

max screen brightness

Fully charged

Only 1 gmail account

Now, since I use my phone a lot, what concerns me the most, is the battery drain while the screen is on, & I’m active browsing, reading emails, & playing some trivial games like hill climb racing.

So I used both phones, side-by-side, and spent about 30 minutes on various activities… the same stuff on both phones, side-by-side.

I then went into GSam, & looked at the battery “rate of change” chart, to see how efficient each android was…

Surprisingly (and disappointingly), I found that MM would drain at around 35% to 40% per hour… ie it would go flat in under 3 hours of constant use.

Given that KitKat was also powering a 4G SIM card, it should have been worse… but it drained the battery at around 20% – 25% per hour… ie it would go flat in around 4 – 5 hours.

Just to be sure, I swapped the batteries, & did the test again… & got the same results… so I’ve ruled out any differences in batteries.

As a result, I can guess that both Lollipop & Marshmallow have some major flaw, or an inefficient OS design.

As such, there is no way I will be moving away from Kitkat anytime soon.

The only reason I would recommend MarshMallow, is for those who only use their phone for 2 or 3 minutes per day, as MarshMallows “doze” mode means the battery barely drains while the phone has the display off.

It is with great sadness, that I can announce Australia will take a step backwards in becoming the agile and technologically advanced nation that our leaders say they want to promote.

Australia is now a step closer to implementing the non-future-proof FTTN NBN internet technology, as an “alternative” to FTTP.

Based on the “spin” in this article: http://www.nbnco.com.au/blog/fttn-will-help-connect-end-users-to-the-nbn-network-more-quickly.html , its obvious that Australia will have serious long-term issues with broadband speeds.

Its unfortunate that the future potential of Australia’s technology will be hamstrung by “spending dollars in order to save pennies”.

I had a customer that was having some emails disappearing, or more accurately: never arriving.

As with most people, she was using an email program (Mozilla Thunderbird) to download email from her ISP account at Optus (an @optusnet.com.au email address).

The first obvious step was to check the thunderbird spam folder: nothing there.

Next: did she delete them accidentally? No, the Trash was clear.

She then mentioned that sometimes she get warnings about her mailbox being full.

So I figure: ah ha… optusnet shouldn’t get full… so maybe thunderbird is misconfigured… I check the pop3 settings, & I see thunderbird is set to delete emails from the server after 14 days… all quite standard.

So… I’d better check the Optus webmail & see whats going on there.

As soon as I login to Optus webmail, I can see a problem: about 1500 emails sitting in the optus spam folder.

Hold on… did I see that right?

Optus diverts emails to spam BEFORE they can get downloaded to Thunderbird?

I spend some time marking all the spam as “NOT spam”… & while I’m waiting (yes, the Optus webmail is not quick), I do some research:

Turns out Optus Implemented a “new” webmail system in early 2013… customers have no option of disabling the spam filter… none.

And it gets worse: Optus is not good at detecting spam, so occasionally legit emails will go to “webmail spam”… where an average customer will never see it unless they use webmail.

In this case, I noticed some Optus “your mailbox is full” emails in the spam folder!

OK, so someone at Optus is brain-dead, fine.

Maybe I can get around this by re-directing (forwarding) the emails to, say, a gmail account?

No: Optus do not allow mail forwarding.

What about abandoning optus email, & going with one of the free ones like gmail? No: customer has many people who have this address & will not change email address.

So I now have to setup a desktop “webmail login” icon for the customer, & tell her to login once per week, & flag spam emails as legit… she struggles to understand why, but I do the best I can.

In the end, she will probably have to move away from the optusnet email, even if its a gradual “weaning” process.

Looks like Optus have taken a leaf (or a few chapters) from the Telstra/Bigpond customer dis-service manual.

I guess I’ve been lucky, as all Windows 10 upgrades I’ve done, have been uneventful.

But today was my unlucky day.

I upgraded a Windows 7 PC to windows 10, made sure it was fully activated, then proceeded to do some tweaks & some tuning (ie ccleaner, mydefrag, etc).

At some point, I decided I should do a BIOS update, as sometimes, PCs seem to have hardware errors, but the problems disappear after a BIOS upgrade.

I didn’t notice any problems at first, but after a while, task manager refused to show me all the details I expected to see…

Then running speedfan didn’t automatically pop up a UAC prompt… I had to right-click & run as administrator… weird.

In trying to resolve that issue, I then found I couldn’t run an elevated Administrator CMD prompt, even though I was administrator.

WTF is going on?

I find I still use Control Panel instead of the new Settings app… there just isn’t enough technical power in the Settings app… it needs some serious work before it can replace Control Panel.

Anyway, while looking through Control Panel, I notice Windows is no longer activated, & the displayed product key ends in 8HVX7.

The error code I see is: 0xC004C003

So I figure: I’ll just ring Microsoft & get them to re-activate it… after all, thats what would happen with windows 7 & 8.

Since it was an upgrade from Windows 7, I decide its probably easier to talk to a real human… BIG mistake.

After explaining the situation to the “Microsoft Employee”, I’m told “Our activation servers are very busy, and it can take a few days for windows 10 to activate”

Huh?

So I explain again: 10 was activated & then got de-activated… could it have been due to the BIOS upgrade?

And I’m told “No, nothing to do with a BIOS upgrade, trust us, it will be fine in a few days time”

Well, the last time Microsoft asked us to trust them… they released Windows 8.

So no, I’m not going to trust them, & I don’t believe a word this guy is saying… So I just say OK, then hang up.

I toy with the idea of calling again… maybe I’ll get someone competent this time? What are the chances of that? 😉

So a quick search online shows others with similar stories (who are fed similar BS from Microsoft).

So, the solution?

I don’t like it, but I re-installed windows 7, & then did the whole upgrade process again (making sure Windows 7 was fully updated before doing the Windows 10 upgrade).

Luckily, I have downloaded a windows 10 install ISO & made a Windows 10 boot USB, so I don’t have to wait for a 4GB download over my slow internet connection… no thanks to our pathetic Prime Minister: Tony Abbott…

After the Windows 10 update, it activated immediately, and stayed that way.

So my advice is: If you think you might need to update your BIOS, do it before updating to windows 10.

So on the customer PC, I installed a new HDD, installed windows 7, activated & did most updates, then upgraded to windows 10

Since the HDD was new, I decided to then do a clean install of Windows 10, after which, it re-activated after skipping the registration key prompt… so far all normal.

To speed up restoring customer data, I typically remove the HDD from a new system (in this case its a Windows 10 PC), attach it to my workshop Windows 7 PC (using SATA), copy the customer data to the Windows 10 HDD, then re-insert the Win10 HDD into original PC…

But each time I tried it, data would disappear, or was only half was visible, or I would get boot errors & all sorts of corruption.

After re-installing Windows 7 & doing the win10 upgrade 3 separate times, I eventually decided that windows 7 just cannot handle the Windows 10 file system

So, after much frustration, I just copied the customer data from the workshop PC to an external USB drive, then copy the data to the Win10 system via the USB

Now I need to ask myself: how long will I wait before upgrading all my work PCs to windows 10?

Yep, it all sounds vague, yet interesting enough to get a software developer interested in getting money for software.

Hovering my mouse over some of the links in the email shows that the links point to a conduit.com portal.

In this day and age, it pays to be suspicious, and since the only address I recognise is conduit.com (from my experience in helping customers with computers bogged down with junk software (ie its not virus/spyware/malware, but it gets in the way of using the computer the way it should be used), I know that conduit should be avoided at almost any cost.

So rather than click on any links, I decide to go directly to perion.com and codefuel.com

at perion.com, I see mention of software like:

incredimail

smilebox

sweetim

molto

photojoy

and various other junk software.

So now I know for sure:

Stay away from perion.com and codefuel.com

As far as I’m concerned, based on all the negative experience I (and many of my customers) have had with incredimail alone, I know that this leopard might have changed its spots, but its still something you should stay well away from.